izigame.me

For years I was an every year, 1000s of hours, release day buyer for Madden. Madden 18 was so bad that I vowed to take a break for years to let them sort some shit out. Surely waiting 6 years would make M24 feel like an actual upgrade right? Nope, same old shit. For reference I am a franchise only player so IDGAF about MUT or anything else, my review is "offline" (it's actually forced online) franchise centric, considering this is supposed to be the official simulation experience of the NFL.
-Players feel sluggish, and just making them do what you want them to do is a struggle. Making these players do things they could do in real life is the whole point of a football game, but it still feels like running in quicksand.
-Aggressive catch was useless in M18 and before, it's still useless. Same goes for possession WRs. Madden somewhere along the line decided that it should simply be impossible to complete a pass in traffic unless you're in MUT using Moss. An elite 95+ spec and CIT receiver 1 on 1 with a corner 6 inches shorter in real life is an auto throw and very likely a huge completion. In madden, it is either just dropped inexplicably, picked, or popped up in the air. There just isn't really an animation for catching a pass over a defender. It's utterly bizarre that this has gone unaddressed for a half a decade+. A very common type of receiver and play is simply not viable even 10% of the time in madden. I play with the Colts mostly, and Michael Pittman Jr. isn't Tyreek Hill, but he should be able to separate and make tough catches. But in madden there's simply no value in receivers who win via anything but speed and he isn't any fun to use. Make it make sense.
-these are NFL players, but sometimes it feels like I can't get them to do something I would be able to as a regular person because controls are so sluggish and unpolished. It isn't fun to control these guys, which is a pretty major part of a sports game.
-trench play still doesn't feel realistic. I have Quenton Nelson on my team but he doesn't feel powerful or smart at all.
-it's still very noticeable that the AI has very different rules for itself vs you, which is a terrible piece of game design. The beauty of the NFL is how coldly equal it is for everyone, and you don't get that from madden. Balls my players can reach they'll inexplicably short arm, while the CPU makes plays you know your players never would.
-The commentators are still the worst in sports games. Delayed and nonsensical reactions. Massive moments don't feel like it, whereas they'll treat a missed preseason FG like it lost the super bowl. Madden should have multiple teams of commentators to keep it fresh, and have much more grandiose of a scope of lines recorded to pull from. If they were innovative I'd say they should start to look into use of AI to help make realistic real time reactions to stuff, I think the possibilities there are so exciting, but we all know EA doesn't innovate.
-still animation based gameplay
Now the thing I am even more qualified to comment on is the inner workings of franchise and team building. OOTP is the gold standard for this and I'll reference it a bunch because of that, but every sports franchise blows madden out of the water here. And again, disappointingly little progress has been made here, sometimes it is worse.
-AI still feels less alive than any other sports video game. No game is perfect at immersion, but madden is truly bottom tier still. No adjustments are ever made by the CPU. Baffling team building logic. OOTP transports me to a new world, madden makes it painfully clear at all stops that it is a soulless video game made by a company that wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.
-Bugs everywhere, and the menu is sooo slow. I'm running a 3070/5800x build and the gameplay runs fine fps wise, but the menus still are like pulling teeth. I have heard people with worse computers not even being able to open the game.
-Compounding slow menus, the UI is somehow worse than when I quit madden half a decade back.
-Scouting, also somehow worse. You literally have to fire your whole scouting department and rehire a new one every preseason to scout effectively. If madden doesn't care to make scouting realistic or fun (this iteration of scouting is neither) then why make it part of the game at all? OOTP doesn't have a scouting mechanic- you hire a scout, with money that you could have used elsewhere, and then you simply have to put trust into that scout that their evaluations are better than other teams' scouts. If you skimped on paying for a great scout you'll have consequences, but paying for the best scout means less money for players, developments, etc. It is different, but 100X more immersive and realistic than madden. I love scouting if done right, but if you don't care to do it right, you end up with a process that just feels painful as it does in M24 and would be better off without it entirely.
-I heard some say madden's created draft classes are improved, but I don't really see it. It's still a shell of what it could be, and still isn't realistic at all. I don't see varied enough skillsets, I still see far too many bad athletes, I see unrealistic skillsets, the terrible scouting system. I did enjoy that scouting grades aren't so specific anymore-"day 3" as a designation rather than "round 5" leaves it open to that player going anywhere from round 3 to undrafted, so if you like a guy you gotta take him. More realistic than before at least.
-not franchise specific per se, but one of my biggest sticking points that I honestly cannot believe has still not been addressed- positional designations. Mind mindbogglingly, draft prospects are *still* shoehorned into being "LG" or "ROLB" or "FS," when in real life guys are seen much more generally as an OT prospect, an off ball LB prospect, a pass rusher, etc. It makes absolutely no sense, all it does is needlessly complicate things. How has this still not been made more realistic? Get rid of the left vs right BS, that is not how any draft analyst actually looks at prospects, and all it does it add multiple extra menus to scouting that are needless. Especially when madden lets you edit any offensive lineman to any other position with no penalty- another thing they should address.
-Not only do they still bizarrely specify things like left vs right guard, they use positional names out of 2001. LE/RE/DT/OLB/MLB for every team and scheme still? No edge rusher designation? Absolutely embarrassing for everyone involved with this game that this has not been updated in 20 years. Players on defense should be listed as such- interior defenders, pass rushers, off ball linebackers, safeties, corners, with variations within- tweener iDL-edge players, LB/S hybrids, etc. This has been how it works for a long time now IRL, and updating it would simplify it so much! Instead, we *still* have 4-3 teams signing pass rushers with 40 coverage to play off ball, or 3-4 teams with 240 pound 3techs. It hurts my brain how little effort and knowledge it would take for madden to make this change, and what a difference it would make in the quality of their product, and they still haven't. Shameful.

I could go on, but what's the point? Whoever is making decisions for this franchise decided long ago that integrity or pride was much less important than the bottom line, so they'll keep putting out $70 roster updates designed to take money from small children via MUT. If the NFL understood the importance of a good official video game for a sport, they'd have some standards for EA, but it doesn't look like that will ever happen. TL;DR- buggy, boring, soulless, don't buy. I'll get my hours in, if only to get my money's worth and see if I can get a workable experience to last me another half decade before I give this company money again. But if you're any less than a football starved maniac who hasn't bought madden in 6 years, don't bother, really.